Together

Ikea. ABBA. Pippi Longstocking. Tuborg. Lego. Welcome to Sweden.

Now meet Goran, the cheerful peacenik, his controlling girlfriend Lena, and the members of their commune: cynical Lasse, his newly converted lesbian ex-wife Anna, their war-games deprived son Tet, Lasse's wanna-be lover Klas with the helmet haircut, the bitter class-warrior Erik and the earnest eco-freaks Signe and Sigvard, who are joined by Goran's sister Elisabeth, the suburban housewife on the run from her drunkard husband Rolf with her sullen children Stefan and Eva, who befriend the lonely neighborhood boy Fredrik.

Got that?

Together, the new film by Swedish writer/director Lukas Moodysson, puts character before place. Much has been made of the fact that this colorful memory of the idealistic 70s comes from Sweden, as if there weren't communes everywhere and other countries didn't have a past. Moodysson really means his title and spends time with his large and lovely cast of characters, accomplishing the amazing feat of giving everybody their due.

Together interweaves three or four major plots with several subplots, and somehow they all revolve around loneliness and its opposite - for a while, the film gets mighty sad. The children Stefan and Eva especially suffer from their parents' split-up and wearily conclude that "all adults are idiots."

I was pleased with the way Moodysson avoids easy clichés: the guffaws at the hippies' expense are balanced by potshots at their straight-arrow neighbors. "Together" may easily feature the most uplifting ending of any film not starring Robin Williams - and if the word "uplifting" makes you cringe, then you should know that the tremendous finale of "Together" is altogether earned. If you're looking for a film to restore some faith in human goodness, this is it.